Decline in educational standards in last few decades

Consolidating English Medium

ENGLISH: I had initially thought of stopping these reminiscences about the reintroduction of English medium last week, because my second stint at the Ministry was comparatively recent.

But I realised that three years have passed since I went back, and in any case I did not do much then about English medium itself, so that story can be concluded today.

By the middle of 2003, with over 10,000 children studying in the English medium, the programme seemed to be safe.

This became definite when, towards the end of 2003, the President began to reassert herself, and it seemed clear that her support in the country at large was increasing. Even before she dramatically took control of some vital Ministries, she had begun to have meetings at President's House to which she invited officials from all over the country.

She also invited relevant Ministers, and I could see the way the wind was blowing when, for the meeting on English, though none of the UNP Ministers attended, Rauff Hakeem turned up.

This may have been due entirely to his interest in the programme, but I could not help thinking that he had understood, at the very least, that cohabitation required some acknowledgment of the President's authority.

Confidence

In such a context Mr Medagama, in whom Karunasena Kodituwakku continued to repose confidence, and who had remained at the helm of aid assisted programmes, was able to bring in some of his old associates to look after English activities after the neglect they had suffered for a year and more.

Most important of these officers was Arya Subasinghe, who had once been in charge of the Teacher Education and Teacher Deployment Project, but had given up after a clash with the Minister of that period, Richard Pathirana.

He was brought in specifically for the English medium programme, and immediately proved his worth.

He was delightfully old school and, though he worked slowly and through the system, he developed training programmes that helped to ensure acceptance of the change by those at different levels of authority.

Though I was startled to discover that some of these were conducted entirely in Sinhala, and the actual professional benefits seemed minimal, the manner in which he had got provincial administrators and teacher educators involved ensured that opposition became muted. He had also devised methods to get NIE experts to contribute to the programme, albeit in peripheral activities.

Thus, even though its leadership continued opposed to English medium, enough officers were willing to help him to ensure that the programme continued. He had also managed to inspire the younger staff at the Ministry, and I found them extremely committed and enthusiastic when I returned.

This was in the middle of 2004, after Tara had resumed duties as Secretary to the Ministry. This ensured, for the President had taken on the Ministry herself, that everyone knew English medium was a priority.

I refused again to join full time, for the problems at the university were continuing, exacerbated by Chandrika's propensity to listen to stories.

She had kept on the Chairman of the UGC who had spent the previous two years assiduously following the programmes and prejudices of the Ranil Wickremesinghe Government.

Elsewhere she had dismissed senior officials but, far from consulting Tara over their replacements, she appointed individuals to whom she felt obliged, without considering their suitability for the innovations Tara planned.

Not successful

This was one reason why Tara's tenure at the Ministry during the year and a half she remained in office was not as successful as her previous stint. Another was that by now the calibre of the officials had declined considerably from the days of Lalith Weeratunge and Nihal Herath and G L S Nanayakkara. Even those who sympathised with her ideas were not very sure of how they should proceed.

As a result, Tara moved more slowly than was desirable, perhaps secure in the assumption that she had over two years to implement her programme. Still, she certainly made some progress during the first few months, more I think than anyone else would have done. But then the tsunami struck, and Chandrika panicked when relief seemed to have gone reasonably well though she had been out of the country.

She decided to bring everything under her own control and, without too many capable people on whom she could rely, she involved Tara too in one of the important relief programmes.

The result was that, for several weeks from January 2005, Tara was hardly in her office at the Ministry of Education. Nothing moved without her and, by the time she was able to resume duties more actively, the political situation had changed and officials had begun to regard her as a lame duck. As a result her innovations did not take root, and many of them were scrapped when the Government changed.

English medium in itself did not suffer, for as noted the roots seemed to have gone too deep for them to be eradicated, even though an attempt was indeed made after Tara had left. Fortunately the prejudices of the NIE were overcome by the able and efficient staffers at the Ministry, who made it clear to the new Secretary that the programme was working in rural areas as well.

Value

What did suffer was the attempt to add value to the whole educational system through the programme.

Training was pedestrian, in the style to which the NIE had now grown accustomed, which meant that initiative and enthusiasm was not encouraged in teachers or students.

Monitoring was not done proactively, so that the support the more deprived schools needed was not supplied regularly.

Our original idea of Quality Development Teams in schools participating in the programme, so that English teachers could develop the English of their peers who were subject specialists, while these latter helped English teachers to increase their knowledge of the subjects they would help in teaching in the lower classes, was totally forgotten.

Most serious of all, the textbooks degenerated into pale shadows of the innovative and challenging materials we had envisaged.

Only literal translations of the Sinhala texts were permitted, with the added disadvantage that those producing them were not very knowledgeable about either English or the subject matter they were dealing with.

But, despite all this, in the long run, assuming students take Ordinary Levels in English this year and the results are not markedly bad, the programme will survive.

Given how sadly educational standards have declined over the last few decades, when not only teachers but also teacher educators and administrators have had no opportunities and no encouragement to read good modern material in their subjects, I believe the first few batches of English medium students will in time lead a resurgence in actual education in this country.

At least the world will be open to them, and they will know where we should be heading, which is not the case at all now with those trapped in the deprivation to which functional monolinugalism has doomed them.